A little more than one year previously at the Nevada Grand Prix, the Cadillac racing team were ultimately given the go-ahead as Formula One’s most recent participant for the 2026 season. Building the squad from the ground up has entailed a frenetic pace of work that the team principal, Graeme Lowdon, has equated to the Apollo moon landing. As F1 arrives on Las Vegas this weekend, the team understand the clock is ticking.
The Race Against Time to Melbourne
At the final race of the season to be staged in the United States, with just over three months to go before they make their debut for the maiden outing in Melbourne at the first race of 2026, Cadillac have made significant progress but, in what must seem like a monumental task, they are aware there will never be enough hours in the day.
The CTO, Nick Chester, came aboard the newly formed operation in the spring of 2023 not long after it was formed, when the team were without even an approved entry. He has been at its center ever since and gets a wry smile when reflecting on the ride.
“You might get five minutes looking back at what you’ve done and think: ‘Incredible, how impressive what the team has created in a short three-year period,’” he notes. “Then the very next instant you realize: ‘Yeah, there is still a great deal to do.’”
A One-of-a-Kind Task
Chester achieved victories at Renault in the driver Fernando Alonso's championship-winning years of 2005/2006 and was in command of engineering strategy at the recently formed Mercedes electric racing team, but no other project has quite compared with the task of launching the iconic American Cadillac name, a works entry supported by the parent company, General Motors, into the pinnacle of motorsport.
“Creating an Formula One team from the ground up, how often do you get the opportunity to do that?” he observes. “It's unparalleled. In an established team you don’t get the possibility to transform team culture.”
With every day that passes thoughts are sharper on the looming decisive point in the Australian GP and expectations are being handled.
“It's reasonable to expect that a brand-new squad coming in is likely to start at the back but simply getting on to the grid will be an accomplishment in itself,” Graeme Lowdon commented recently and while Chester agreed with this sentiment he thought the team had a reputation to build as well.
“The initial objective we intend to prove is that we should be there,” he says. “So we turn up and we operate well. We aim to demonstrate that we’re a proper team performing the correct procedures on the circuit. Once we’ve shown that we are a legitimate team, then we aim to demonstrate forward movement from there on.”
Pilot Selection and Recruitment Effort
In August they contracted Sergio Perez and Bottas as their pilots for 2026, a duo notable for their priceless expertise in operating at the front in two championship-winning squads, Red Bull and the Mercedes team, and Valtteri Bottas echoed the mood of combative optimism.
“Naturally, we have a realistic outlook,” he said. “There’s going to be a massive task to do, and we expect probably a difficult start, because it is F1. But we’re not there to finish last. I am confident with this structure, with this group, these people, it's entirely possible we can't manage to progress rapidly up to the pace and enjoy some success.”
To achieve that goal hiring has been in full swing, with staff now up to more than 400 and intended to hit the objective of six hundred quickly. In addition to their present headquarters at the Silverstone circuit, the team are in the midst of completing an main base at Fishers, Indiana in Indy and there is the GM plant in Charlotte, where they are building the center to build the power unit, set for the 2029 season – until then they will run Ferrari power units – and the Toyota's wind tunnel in Germany. It is a complex structure, at odds with the movement in Formula One for increased consolidation, and has led to the new cultural approach to which the CTO referred.
NASA Model
“It’s highly modelled on the Apollo program,” remarked Graeme Lowdon ahead of the British Grand Prix in mid-season. “We have a clear-eyed view, we understand how tough it is. The schedules, they’re super, super, super short. Well, we’re not putting a man on the moon, but it feels like it sometimes.”
So they have adopted, as opposed to the conventional chain of command, a non-hierarchical approach akin to that of the space agency's, where there were a assortment of Apollo teams all working on various components of the project at a different facilities.
“In a system where you follow a procedure where an issue arises and they report it to their supervisor, that manager consults a leader at a different location, it goes back down the chain, it’s super slow,” explains Chester. “So we empower staff to really get on with it. Avoiding hierarchical consent for everything is far more efficient and more rapid.”
What Lies Ahead
The success of this agile approach will be proven in the heat of competition next season and there is a significant degree at stake for F1, too. Cadillac have taken on as their test driver the 25-year-old American Colton Herta
